Schedule and readings
This course will have weekly readings covering a variety of topics. These will be from the academic literature and from the popular press. Some also include short videos. Every week, there will also be a "from the news" reading, responding to very recent current events.
The full details of citations for the course readings are available on the syllabus, which is here.
Several of the articles in this course are not freely available due to paywalls. In the table below, you will find both direct links to the articles on the websites of their publishers, and (in many cases) links to licensed versions of the articles, which will often require you to log in with your UW credentials to either your account on UW Learn or the UW Library.
Please come to class prepared to discuss the week's readings. Each week there will also be a writing assignment, shown on the weekly assignments pane, for which students must write a 500-1000 word paper, due at 11:59 PM on the Monday night before our Tuesday lectures.
For example, before the first lecture, on Tuesday, January 10, please read the introductory material for week 1; at that class, we will give the prompt for that week's writing assignment, which is due on January 16.
# | Date | Topics | Readings | "From the News" reading | Writing assignment |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
1 | 10 Jan | Welcome, introductions, case studies |
| none | Assignment 1, due 16 Jan |
2 | 17 Jan | Case studies and theoretical approaches |
|
Vice article about sexually harassing chatbot | Assignment 2, due 23 Jan |
3 | 24 Jan | Racial discrimination and criminal justice |
|
link | Assignment 3, due 30 Jan |
4 | 31 Jan | Discrimination against indigenous people |
|
article | Assignment 4, due 6 Feb |
5 | 7 Feb | Gender discrimination and violence against women |
|
WIRED article about LLMs | Assignment 5, due 13 Feb |
6 | 14 Feb | Big data, right to privacy, right to be forgotten |
|
Vice article about AI sketch artist | Assignment 6, due 27 Feb |
Reading week Feb 21 | |||||
7 | 28 Feb | Discrimination against LGBTQ people |
|
AI-generated stories, selling mental health data, deepfakes of Twitch streamers | Assignment 7, due 6 Mar |
8 | 7 Mar | Discrimination against disabled people |
|
New Yorker article | Assignment 8, due 13 Mar |
9 | 14 Mar | Global issues, government surveillance |
|
article #1, article #2 | Assignment 9, due 20 Mar |
10 | 21 Mar | Fixes: inclusivity in tech and CS education |
|
regulation in AI: editorial, podcast (listen to the segment about crypto regulation | Assignment 10, due 27 Mar |
11 | 28 Mar | Fixes: law, regulation, others |
|
none for this week | Assignment 11, due 3 Apr |
12 | 4 Apr | Wrap up and student projects | N/A | TBD | N/A |